Let's Play / Master Classes Archive

I thought I'd mention here that some folks in the games sub-forum suggested I ought to do a "Let's Decipher Moon Language: Mushishi DS" thread. Now, I'm in no way ready to start this immediately, since I need to both figure out if I have the time to keep it up, and figure out a reliable way of screen-shotting my DS. (My new digital camera's close-up setting *might* actually do it on a mini-tripod in good lighting, but I'd have to try it out.) But since it looks like the schedule's already reserved into August, I thought I'd throw it out here in the ideas pile.

I was going to ask to do a Half-Life one, but Phat's beaten me to it. I might do one of these for the expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. At some point.

Thanks to a timely computer explosion, I lost the final draft of my first post for my Final Fantasy X: International Let's Play. Working on it on my laptop but further posts depend on getting the desktop back up to speed.

A query: Should I wait until my computer (and with it screenshot taking/import playing powers) are working again before starting the thread? I don't think there's any chance I won't be able to follow through with the LP but I don't really want to start off with a big delay between posts.

Hey guys, now that I have an NES emulator capable of making decent video, how about a quickie video LP of Mega Man 3 played at 150% speed? Might be good for some cheap lulz.

I don't want to let this ridiculousness eat up my Crystalis-or-Suikoden slot though.

do it! it won't count against you.

If it's just a series of youtube videos, dunno if it should necessarily count. But I don't find video LPs very interesting. *shrug*

For me it really depends on how coherent it is. If the guy is just talking while he's playing it's typically not very interesting. If he records the video, and then makes notes and does a quick write-up, and then records himself over the video it works a lot better.

The worst is when they have "guest hosts" for certain segment, because that typically devolves into. "Hey did you know this about the game?" *long awkward pause* "Oh man no, that's really cool, you're good at this game."

For what it's worth, I put my full support behind this idea of yours Brickroad.

Would anyone be interested in a Lets Play focusing on the skirmish mode of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade? The campaign in the original Dawn of War is a little too easy/monotonous to really be interesting, while the freeform campaign in Dark Crusade is just too damn hard on Normal difficulty. I think I could make a run through all of the 2 player skirmish maps on Hard or Very Hard interesting, though.

Malefor: Actually, yeah, that sounds like fun to me. I love RTSs but suck horribly at them, so explanations of your tactical decisions would be a great primer for me.

Hey, I was thinking about doing a similar thing, albeit with a different RTS. The campaign in the game isn't very long (only 12 missions, and there's only one campaign), but it's not spectacularly interesting for the most part; Normal is pretty easy, but Hard is ridiculous. But! I got to thinking about, yeah, skirmish or scenario maps.

It'd probably make for a shorter LP, but I think that's cool too. It's certainly more manageable. I know I'd read yours; I tried the original Dawn of War demo when it came out, but it ran kinda iffy, and it won't run on my laptop at all (no hardware T&L), which is really disappointing because it always looked like a really fun game (and I liked being able to use a custom flag). dosboot ran his Shadowrun speed run and while normally I would've scoffed at such a thing, it worked pretty well because it WAS short, and also we got to chat about SR setting stuff. I imagine a similar thing would happen as all the 40K geeks come out of the woodwork around here, I know we must have 'em. ;D

Anyway, do it!

The first segment of my MM3 thing is here, and there's a link there to the second segment, and I'm working on the third tonight. I don't want to take up a lot of real estate here at Talking Time because it'd be shitty of me to jump the queue, and because IssunBug has already staked his claim for MM3, so if you want to discuss it leave some comments over on the yubertubes.

Fun fact: yes I know my mic quality sucks and I talk too fast and it sounds like I have a cold.

I've lurked for a while, but the Let's Plays were the tipping point for me to register. I was thinking about doing a Let's Play of a Falcom game (One of the Ys games or Sorcerian) at some point in the future, and was wondering if anyone would be interested. Basically my choices come down to:

Ys: The Oath in Felghana/Ys 3: I'm thinking about playing through the original Ys 3, and then the remake to show what they changed and what sort of stayed the same. I also thought it would give people a good look at Ys: OiF which never made in out of Japan (but has an english translation patch).

The only problem with this would be that the Ys games in general aren't exactly known for branching paths and all that, so it might get boring. I would try to make up for this by pointing out boss patterns and the like. I wouldn't be able to start this until the middle of August, because I don't have access to my computer with Ys: OiF on it. I could, however, start on the Ys 3 stuff.

Sorcerian: This would be the PC version that Sierra released in the states, and it's a side scrolling rpg thing. It's a pretty fun game, as long as you don't mind a little bit of goofy animation, and it would have more audience participation since you have to pick your characters' class and gender, and you can pick what mission you want to do. Also, you can imbue weapons with magic and train characters as well.

Only problem with this is that while I'm pretty sure I've beaten every mission in Sorcerian before, it's been a while so I'd have to brush up on some things.

Any thoughts?

Pretty cool so far. I believe your method is better than regular video LPs. Far less dead air and confused grunts. But I will never forgive your white boy rap.

Yes please.

Ys please?

I've never played any of those but I've long been curious about Ys.

Does it matter which version of the original Ys 3 that I play? I was leaning toward the Genesis version myself since its music is better than the SNES version. I'd like to give the TG-16 one a shot, but don't have access to it.

What? Seriously? That's a strange and (I think) rare occasion.

The SNES version does sound cleaner, I just think that they chose some rather obnoxious samples (lots of faux horns that just sound bad). To be fair, some people do like the SNES soundtrack better, I just think the Genesis version sounds better despite some of the scratchiness.

Would anybody be interested in an LP of the original Advance Wars?

Not inspired by any current LPs, of course.

I'm really enjoying the strategy ones. Fire Emblem one's great, Ogre Battle's a little harder to follow but also good fun. Only concern would be possibly overloading the strategy rpg factor but... that one's got tanks. That's different.

Go for it.

Not planning to do it soon. Like, any time soon.

AW is far more strategy than any of those. Like, no RP elements at all.

I'm fairly new here: is it par for course to show the tutorial levels? If they were literally just tutorials I'd leave 'em, but these ones talk to you for a bit and then basically let you do your own thing. Is it worth it, do you think?

No internet OR sound on my normal computer means I've written out LPs for the first two already, which are the most tutorial-heavy.

Having played through the AW tutorial stages, I don't really think they offer terribly much, especially since you're probably going to be going over a fair amount of what's discussed in there during gameplay.

Also, I'd read it, if only to see which team you bring along to the final mission.

Bonus points if your allies are useless.

I'd totally be cool with an Advance Wars LP. I'm liking the more tutorial-ish LPs, like the Warhammer one. Having a master demonstrate high-level play in a more freeform game is by default more interesting than basically watching a playthrough of an RPG that I could just play myself.

Uhhh... you guys doing RPG LPs are doing really nice ones though!

Brickroad, you are one funny bastard.

The start of my LP will go up in a few hours. I, uh, didn't prepare, and took the opportunity to let some of the longer LPs finish and dick around with the image sizes to find the best way to do a game that has subtitles at 1024x768. (In the end, I decided to make you people squint.)

Sign me up for Sweet Home.

I love you.

You going to bother explaining the movie the game is based off of? I have this but have never tried actually playing through it...